Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Feature Filmmaker Podcast.
Anna:Where we record, once a year, our thoughts about our films.
Kent:So, welcome back. Welcome back after a very long hiatus. Welcome back to us and to you. Um, quick updates. We wanted to give you guys some updates. We wanted to talk a little bit about some exciting things that have happened, including some premieres and film festivals and Um, just where we're at in terms of our own journey, and, um, And also
Anna:explain why we've been gone, because,
Kent:Yeah, that too. We
Anna:did send out an email, I think.
Kent:Yeah, we did.
Anna:I hope we did. But, otherwise, we kind of disappeared for a year. And there's a good reason, but I don't know if we really explained ourselves. So,
Kent:Many good reasons. We
Anna:can do that today.
Kent:So, first off, where have you gone to? Anyway, I think that was a Dave Matthews reference. And we As a quick update, have, as you knew, I think if you listened to the last couple podcasts that we did right before we went dark, we started fostering two children about a year and a quarter ago, maybe almost, we're pushing a year and a half now.
Anna:Yeah, they were three. Ages three and eight months when we got them. Yes,
Kent:and we were pushing forward with some career stuff And everything was getting so intensely overwhelming We were both about to Die, so
Anna:something had to go
Kent:we said something had to go and unfortunately This podcast was one tiny thing that we could let go and now we feel ready And we just have so little going on in our lives that we just needed to fill it up. And we thought the podcast would fit the bill. No, not really. It's
Anna:never been a problem.
Kent:But we, the kids have gotten a little older in a year and a half. Precisely that much older.
Anna:Going to adopt the children we were fostering.
Kent:Which is super exciting. And yeah, so that'll happen any week now. And so things have stabilized. But also, we have not only locked the edit, but also just finished the Loved and Lost, our first fiction feature film, and Anna's directorial debut. And we premiered it just a few weeks ago, and that was a great experience. We'll talk more about that later, but that's another big milestone. And I think that the last big milestone that I have, and you let me know if you have other updates, is that we have made the hard plunge into leaping into the lifestyle that we have, We promised on this podcast, which was a full time feature filmmaker career,
Anna:making a living, making feature films, which we were supplementing before with commercial work. And we tried to be mostly narrative, but sometimes We would do internal video or live event coverage.
Kent:And we did pretty well with that. Just fine. Weddings was something we quit way back in 2020, about nine months ago, we quit commercials and we said we are going to survive now exclusively off of making feature films. So if that is something you guys want to learn how to do, we are doing it and we have done it for nine months. The
Anna:whole pregnancy.
Kent:We've only had to hide from mortgage collectors a couple times. I'm just kidding. No, we're, we're doing fine. And, and, and we are seeing huge career progress and results in ways that we are excited to share with you guys, not as a form of. bragging or whatever like we really are paving this road first of all for ourselves because it's our dream but also because we know that so many of you want these results and so we know that if we can achieve them we can share them and we want you guys to be able to experience not only what it's like to fund and finish your first feature film but to distribute it and get your next one off the ground and create a career that is actually able to you know support children and Spouses and mortgages and food and whatever, you know, like you can do it and if we can do it You can definitely do it.
Anna:Yeah, especially if you don't have a family of seven if it's just you it's even easier
Kent:Well,
Anna:maybe
Kent:if you have a family of like 12 Then don't count yourself out because if we can do it with five kids you can do It's seven kids or whatever, you know, like it's, it's just possible. It is possible. Um, we don't really believe that circumstances will stop you from being able to do, to do this. If you feel like it's something you're supposed to be doing and you want to be doing it, then we want to support you in that.
Anna:Yeah. I think, I think we hit all the major updates. We are making a documentary. We've been working on that for a little while now. It's wrapping up production. We're moving into post. We still will pick up a few more shots, a few more days. Yeah. But that one is nearly in post production and we have another fiction feature that's, the script is finished. We've filmed a test scene and we're getting financing for that one. So those are kind of our three projects that we have. The Loved and Lost being the finished one that's in the distribution stage. Um, The Ride in Paradise is the name of the documentary, which is just wrapping up production.
Kent:There's more information on all these projects on our, on our website.
Anna:And Our Father, which is our fiction feature that's in development right now. And it's scripted, pre produced, largely just seeking financing. I would say
Kent:developed largely, not pre produced yet, but it's kind of What
Anna:do you call the pre production before pre production?
Kent:Development.
Anna:Packaged, developed.
Kent:Not quite packaged. Anyway, but I do feel like there's a lot of momentum behind that project. We can't go into details at this phase. Usually development phase is when it's, everything's kind of hush, hush. But, um, It's got good momentum and I'm, you know, I'm not going to say it's going to be done next month, you know, financed and greenlit, but it, it, uh, it feels good. I feel like it's going to happen and we're just going to keep riding the wave until it takes us to shore. So, um, should we move into talking about a little bit of takeaways that we had from our, Festival experience.
Anna:Yeah, let's talk about festivals. Just a little bit. We'll keep our podcast short today. But we did want to touch on that because it's fresh on our minds. And I think that film festivals are valuable no matter where you're at in whatever stage you're in. And we're in various stages on different productions. But even if you're just learning and you haven't made anything yet, Or you're just interested, and you want to start learning, film festivals are a great way to do that. And I would recommend finding ones that are local and small, not necessarily flying out to California and seeing a big one there, but just Sundance or whatever. Yeah, I mean, if you're Those are great. They're great. If you're nearby, go. But, if not, you can also just get a festival pass to something near you. There are tons of them. and tons of film festivals and it will not be difficult to google film festivals near me and find local film festivals all around you all during the year.
Kent:We're in Georgia we have honestly Atlanta Film Festival is a great festival and there's a bunch of others in Noonan and Savannah and Macon and elsewhere.
Anna:In every state all over. And in Utah
Kent:there's like The big one, Sundance, but then there's also Slamdance, and there's Zion's Indie Film Fest, and there's like Utah Film something or another. There's several, um, and then in California, there's like a hundred thousand. And even if you're in Canada, there's some really high profile Canadian festivals. And so there's festivals all over the world. Just no matter where you are, you will find good festivals. Um, I mean, I'm from Ohio, which people have this perception of Ohio that like, there's nothing there. There are more than one very good film festivals in Ohio. So I
Anna:feel like most states have at least 20 or 30, but I'm not kidding. I really think it's very saturated.
Kent:So I want to talk a little bit about is a film festival and what isn't it. Um, now obviously we know what it is, but like, I think some people have this imagination that a film festival is a magic place where you go and submit your film. It of course gets selected.
Anna:Sorry.
Kent:Everyone loves it. And a distributor offers you three million dollars to buy your movie from you and all your dreams come true. And that was maybe a reality for some very talented people in the 90s. And it survived a little bit into the early 2000s. And I think Alex Ferrari talks a lot about this on his film, Podcast and book that that age has passed that ship has sailed and that doesn't typically happen and that's okay It doesn't mean that film festivals are useless It's just unlikely that you're gonna get into one of the big ten and sell your movie for a ton of money And so the question becomes is it even worth? making a super micro budget first feature, and I would say, absolutely. Like, super, super worth it. And for more than just, you're going to learn a lot. I really think that you can sell a movie, and we've seen people making their money back and making a profit on movies that are frankly, pretty bad. Like, they're pretty bad films. Production value is low, the acting is almost unwatchable, and, you know, just the story makes little to no sense, and yet these movies are making their money back, and some of them, do really well. So our experience is that we have just premiered our film at its first film festival, The Loved and Lost. And it didn't get into any of the major, major film festivals. Um, we're still submitting to some larger ones that are up the mid tier.
Anna:We did only submit a work in progress, so we've never actually submitted the finished film
Kent:to any
Anna:big festivals yet.
Kent:But we decided to premiere it. We got the thing done. It was a great screening experience. And the festival itself, We actually did make contact with tons of distributors, which for a smaller festival, it's not Sundance, you know. You think there aren't distributors unless there's a film market attached is what a lot of, you know, AFM people talk about. They're like, hey, you know, there's markets and there's And there's, there's festivals and most festivals don't have a market attached. Well, distributors still go to festivals. And in fact, distributors won't even sometimes go. They'll just,
Anna:they just reach out,
Kent:reach out. And we've been cold reached out if that's grammatically correct, but, uh, reached out to by multiple festivals, sorry, distributors who were aware that our film got into a festival. As soon as you get into any festival, pretty much there will be some lower tiers distributors. And, um, they will reach out to you and want to talk.
Anna:So some of this applies when you have a finished film, but I also want to talk about, I think there's three different, I mean maybe four different ways, and tell me if I'm missing anything that you can participate in a film festival. One would just be to go watch things, meet people, and, you know, Learn because most festivals have panels and Q and A's and you can learn a lot by listening. Um, the other would be submitting a screenplay. A lot of them have screenplay competitions or table reads. Um, submitting a short or submitting a finished feature. Those are all different ways you could participate in a film festival. And that's more
Kent:active participation. The ultimate way would be buy a pass and show up. Like if you don't have anything that year, ready to go. Buying a pass and showing up isn't bad. I do think that the most fruitful way to engage would be to make anything.
Anna:If you have something you can submit, a short, we submitted a proof of concept for our film. It was a test scene and we basically tested it on our audience there.
Kent:And there were some fatal flaws with that short scene that we had shot in preparation for a feature. And we were able to go do some pick up shots to address that since the festival just a few weeks ago. And see some massive improvements in that test scene. That was totally worth it. Really
Anna:valuable feedback. And guess
Kent:what? We don't, we didn't, because it was an audience mixed, It was a short, so it's put in a short block, which means the audience is comprised mostly of people who are coming to support the filmmakers who made the other shorts. They don't know you, they have no emotional attachment to you, and they're going to give you totally honest feedback. I just asked a question to the audience, like, can you raise your hands if this was clear, or if it was confusing, and When I asked if it was confusing, half the hands went up and I went, thank you. Like took me 10 seconds and I got very valuable feedback on my film. I could feel it in the room. It's always helpful to screen it, but it's hard to screen your stuff for people who don't know you. So the festival was really valuable for that. We, we did the feature, but like Anna said, we had two. Short films that were basically both proofs of concepts or test scenes for features that we're developing. And those were all good experiences and learning experiences.
Anna:And if you have something in the festival, typically you get some sort of a badge that gives you access to not only the rest of the festival, but also sometimes. There are industry specific panels or, in our case, there was like a VIP room where people could hang out and eat snacks and network. And because we had something in the festival, we were in there. Whenever I ran into someone who had that badge on, I could ask, Hey, what, what do you have in the festival? And they could share what they're working on. So it's. Always great if you can submit something, but even if you can't show up, some people had cards with information about their films, about what they were working on, business cards, and you could show up without anything in the festival and say, well, I didn't submit anything this time, but I'm working on this, or I have this other project. It's not showing, but you can see it here. Um, it's still a great way to network with people who are local to you, who are in the same industry as you who could be great. Collaborators. Yeah.
Kent:And, um. Jinx. So, yeah. I, as our kids are in a jinx phase. They are right now. They always jinx each other. Um, I feel like. Because we got to wrap up. Yeah. I feel like some of the key takeaways for me were self distribution is a viable option for indie low budget films. Most people, if they know how to run a good Facebook ad and can cut like a half decent trailer, you can make your money back. And it can be a shockingly bad film. You can still make your money back. There's audiences out there if you're directly marketing to them. Distributors, second thing, are interested in just about anything. They want content. That's sad. The idea of getting offered like a six or a seven figure upfront purchasing agreement is rare for low budget features without name talent.
Anna:It's usually a revenue share deal.
Kent:Yes, usually it's revenue share. And so you have to be careful. There are predatory distributors or even just people who maybe have the best of intentions and just aren't very good. Just be careful. Ask other filmmakers who have distributed through that distributor. Do your due diligence. Make no assumptions and don't give people the benefit of the doubt. But that said. Don't scoff at them and, you know, have the conversations. You'll learn a ton by going through that process. And we're really enjoying that process right now. So we've had several offers. We're getting contacts from a lot of distributors. Um, we're learning exactly where the audience might be for our film. And I'm feeling really confident, um, in our future prospects with that film. And The last thing would be that just making that film and putting it out into the public has generated a ton of interest and credibility for our next film projects, and there's a lot of energy and momentum that came out of that, huge meetings and connections that came out of that, which might seem, I'm still surprised by how small of a festival we went to. It was not One of the big 10 it wouldn't even be considered upper mid tier and how productive and how encouraging and how momentous it was like momentum, like we got a lot of creative and professional momentum out of that festival, which we really needed, honestly. And so, yeah, I would encourage doing it. And we can go into more detail on details of. Distribution, rev share, um, we're
Anna:probably going to have aggregators on the podcast that we met at the festival and just talk about a lot of these things that we've learned. Um, but that was one of my biggest takeaways to was just I, I think it's easy to dismiss in my mind. It was easy to dismiss a smaller festival, but there are benefits at smaller festivals that you frankly can't get at a bigger festival. Like. Networking with people who are local. Well,
Kent:if we'd gotten into Sundance without, you know, Brad Pitt in our movie, we could have very likely been buried in that festival and not actually gotten a front row seat to as much of the proceedings and as many of the connections. And the exact opposite was true. I think we actually were really able to represent, get to know a ton of people. and meet a ton of distributors. Honestly, a lot of potential distribution partners. So it was great. Um, we would encourage you to rethink maybe some of the ways you think about film festivals and their value as more than just marketing or a golden bullet, because they're more than marketing and they're less usually than a golden bullet.
Anna:Yeah. So go check out festivals near you and let us know how it goes. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye.